Reasoned
argumentation has an important part to play in helping persons make
morally upright choices, however it is not, and can never be thought
of by Christians, as an adequate substitute for Christian hope.
Modern technology provides choices for avoiding suffering and death
that can be immoral. Without Christian hope it is unrealistic to
expect persons to choose well in such difficult cases.

I. Introduction

In the past month, it has often been remarked that the events of
September 11 have changed everything and that nothing will be the
same. Our nation is focused, almost fixated, by the daily reports of
our military response, warnings of further attacks and of the danger
of receiving anthrax in the mail. Given that September 11 was one of
the worst attacks our nation has ever suffered, it would be
implausible to argue that the attention it is receiving is
undeserved; however, I fear that it may be distracting us from a
greater threat to human dignity – a threat not to our way of
life and freedom, but a threat that arises from our
misunderstanding of freedom and our society’s lack of respect for
life. In facing this threat, I believe the recent reflections of
Germain Grisez on this subject are of great assistance.

Prior to September 11, the top news story was President Bush’s
decision to allow limited federal funding for human stem cell
research. He made the announcement, live, in his first televised
address to the nation and it came after months of public debate.
Many saw it as a defining moment of his presidency and an indication
of what the pro-life movement might hope for from this
administration. The President’s decision, and the debate over the
relevant moral issues, received widespread attention from the public
and serious treatment from the popular media. This gives us reason
for hope that our democracy is still functioning and that the serious
and most important issues of the day will be treated as such by the
American people.

In spite of the events of “9-11,” this debate merits continued
front-page coverage, least in our concern over terrorism we fail to
address the most critical issue of our day: the threat to human
dignity from advanced reproductive technologies. Politically and
culturally we are poised at a critical juncture and as Catholic
Social Scientists we have a duty not to let this opportunity pass.
Compare the debate over abortion in the United States and Canada. In
Canada, abortion is a far less visible and controversial national
political issue than it is in America. As a consequence, the
Canadian pro-life movement lacks the political clout of the same
movement in our nation. This is undoubtedly attributable to many
factors, but I believe among the most important differences is the
way the abortion license came to be. In Canada it was a slow,
incremental process while in America the U.S. Supreme Court shocked
the nation by striking down the laws of all fifty states.

A shocked body politic is an engaged one and, at least potentially,
one open to the truth. As every teacher knows, it is easier to teach
even hostile students than the bored and disinterested. Shock,
however, has a way of wearing off. As a society, we can become
accustom to even grave offenses to human dignity. Therefore, if a
shocked body politic presents an opportunity, a teachable moment, it
is a fleeting moment and one that we must be diligent not to
squander.

II. Germain Grisez’s “Bioethics and Christian Anthropology”

As social scientists who aspire to engage the culture with truth, we
will be well rewarded by paying particular attention to Germain
Grisez’s analysis of the fundamental issues behind the current
medical ethics debate. Professor Grisez’s article, in the Spring
2001 issue of the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly1,
entitled, “Bioethics and Christian Anthropology,” is divided into
four sections, each of which he describes as “deserving of
book-length treatment.”2
This has become something of a custom of his in recent years,
sketching outlines, almost schema really, on important issues and,
having done the intellectually most difficult portion of the task,
leaving it to others to flesh out and apply his analysis. The first
section of his article, and the only one my paper discusses, is
designated, “Biomedical Technology and the Gospel of Life.”
Therein, Grisez notes the increasing rapid progress of the biomedical
sciences and the power these technological developments have given us
over biology.

Technology is power and can be used for good or ill. We are
surrounded by the benefits – and also the abuses – of our
biotechnological prowess. The advanced reproductive-related medical
technologies developed over the past century, such as in vitro
fertilization, cloning, genetic testing, stem cell treatments and
gene therapy, are being harnessed in an attempt to cure married
couples of infertility, enable same-sex couples to fulfill their
desire to be parents, prevent birth defects, cure children of
diabetes, cure the elderly of Parkinson’s disease and others of
leukemia and hemophilia.3
Less “flashy” and more common examples of the use and abuse of
medical technology relate to the so-called “end of life” issues.
Many persons at some point face the decision, for either themselves
or another, to continue or begin advanced medical treatment in the
hopes of prolonging life.

As biomedical technology creates options for choice and is a form of
power, a descriptive study of its abuse is largely a subset of the
analysis of, in the first place, why people make unreasonable
choices, and secondarily, the particular susceptibility of medical
power to abuse. Grisez mentions some of the more common factors that
provide the context in which bad choices are frequently made,
including defects in the person choosing and in the moral ecology.
Still, bad choices are not reducible to any of the circumstances in
which they are made. The misuse of our ability to make free choices
is a moral evil that arises in the heart of the actor. 4

In regard to choices to use biotechnology immorally and the threat to
human dignity that such choices present, Grisez offers the following
insight,

The
extent of the abuses of biomedical technologies suggests that the
wrongful options are very appealing. Why is that? Human beings exist
in a fallen condition. With profound anxiety we face inevitable
death. Moreover, our human relationships are distorted by sin….
In this fallen situation, choosing uprightly often seems impractical.
Lacking hope for any happiness beyond death, people go after what
they imagine might make them happy during this life.5

The threat of immoral applications of biotechnology and the
attractiveness of such options for choice, has not come upon us
without warning. The rapid development of the life sciences since
the dawn of the twentieth century, coupled with the
dechristianization of western civilization, made the current state of
affairs predictable. Aldous Huxley and C. S. Lewis, in particular,
warned us. Many competent scholars have carried out detailed
applications to our current situation of both Huxley’s Brave New
World and Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.6
It would serve no purpose to retread that ground within the present
paper, but it may be helpful to recall the central features of their
work.

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World insightfully focused on
genetic and biochemical technologies as far more powerful and
socially transforming than, say, nuclear power. The dystopia he
sketched perfectly illustrates a society that exults
freedom-as-personal-gratification with the necessary concomitant loss
in authentic human freedom and dignity. In Brave New World
Revisited, his sequel to Brave New World, Huxley makes the
following chilling remark,

“In
1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced
that there was still plenty of time…. twenty-seven years later, in
this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D. [1958] … I feel a
good deal less optimistic. The prophecies made in 1931 are coming
true much sooner than I thought they would.”7

In the dystopia genre, C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man,
published in 1944, holds a special place. Like Huxley, he viewed
contraception and the advanced reproductive technologies of his day
with grave concern, he wrote:

As regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in
which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of
a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply,
they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of
selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to
be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer.
From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns
out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as
its instrument.8

Lewis
correctly foresaw that the ultimate exercise of humanity’s power
over nature is not to be found in the conquest of space and its
exploration or in the development of nuclear power but in the
conquest and domination of human nature by “eugenics, pre-natal
conditioning, and by education and propaganda.”9
This power of the biological and social sciences over nature itself
is, in each and every instance of its application, the exercise of
power by some persons over others. There are, of course, reasonable
and legitimate applications of such power. A pregnant woman who
takes prenatal vitamins is exercising such power, as are parents when
they attempt to control harmful moral influences on their children.
However, as already mentioned, wrongful biomedical options involving
the abuse of technological power are very appealing, especially when
the person choosing is faced with death or suffering.

Grisez goes on to state that, even when persons without faith
“recognize certain kinds of acts as always wrong, many … have no
compelling motive to endure burdens and sufferings that can be
avoided only by” choosing immorally.10
For example, women dying of kidney failure and whose body is in the
advanced stages of rejecting a kidney donated by her mother stated,
“I do not bank on cloning to save me, but I see no other way to
save myself.”11
The parents of a daughter afflicted with Fanconi anemia, choose to
utilize in vitro fertilization techniques, combined with
pre-implantation embryo testing, to assure the birth of a child with
the right tissue type. The second child, a son, will be used as a
source of stem cells for transplant into their daughter. Without
treatment, children with Fanconi anemia typically do not live past
their seventh birthday.12
Another example is the case of Nicole Masterton who died at age
three of severe burns. She was the youngest of five children, and
her parents’ only daughter. Her parents, British citizens,
subsequent to her death, traveled to Italy to utilize IVF techniques
and embryo testing in an attempt to replace their daughter with
another daughter. When testing revealed that the embryo was male
rather than female, they donated it. As they do not have the funds
for another trip to Italy, they intend to file suit against Great
Britain in the European Court of Human Rights on the grounds that the
British government is violating their rights by not permitting such
techniques to be used in England.13

No one can doubt that the situations just described give very strong
reasons for acting. Preserving ones own life or choosing a course of
action that is likely to save the life of one’s sick child are
grave moral duties. If, however, the only options for choice with a
reasonable likelihood of success are morally evil choices, then the
parents should forgo that choice and endure the sufferings that would
result. Making a morally upright decision in such circumstances is
the reasonable thing to do, however, the parents will obviously have
strong emotional motivations to choose otherwise. While aware that
it is unreasonable to undergo medical procedures, like in vitro
fertilization, that will surely result in the death of many of their
children at the embryonic stage of development and that will
compromise the couple’s human dignity by invading their marital
intimacy and instrumentalising their bodies, such choices can be
rationalized by the couple and considered their “only choice.”
Persons who lack the hope of Christians may describe the situation to
others in terms like, “I had no choice,” or “I really didn’t
have any other option,” or “we couldn’t just stand by and do
nothing.”

According to Grisez, persons who accept Jesus’ offer of salvation
and who, therefore, possess Christian hope can “find it practical
to choose uprightly despite their fallen human condition. When
upright choices lead to suffering, even that suffering can be
accepted joyfully….”14
On the other hand,

Unless
others come to share this Christian hope, we cannot reasonably expect
them to accept as realistic and to try to live by the moral truths
that flow from the sanctity of human life and the dignity of human
persons. No matter how clearly those truths are articulated or how
firmly they are taught, they will seem unrealistic and impractical
apart from their context in the gospel as a whole.15

At
times, certain proponents of the Natural Law tradition have fallen
into a way of speaking that suggests that if we only find an
iron-clad argument or the right rhetoric and way of expressing
ourselves, the logic of our arguments will carry all before them.
Like the stereotypical American tourist in Paris who thinks that if
he just speaks English loud enough he will be understood, we may be
forgetting that there is a real and substantive disconnect in our
conversation with those who know nothing of the hope that is in us.
We many be speaking the same language but the discussion is taking
place between two different worlds.

As evidence of the point Grisez is making here, I will offer two
illustrations. First, public opinion data on abortion16
tends to consistently breakdown as follows:

Prohibited
Abortion in all circumstances: 9%

Legal
to save the life of the mother 11%

Legal
in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother 33%

Legal
for any reason for the first three months 27%

Legal
for any reason for the first six months 5%

Believe
that abortion should be legal at any time 9%

The
most plausible explanation for the plurality of persons who chose
“legal in cases of rape, incest or to save the mother’s life”
is their inability to bear, or ask others to bear, the suffering
involved in carrying to term a child who was conceived in an act of
violence. It is important to note that persons who chose this
category do so precisely because it permits abortion in cases of rape
and incest. Presumably this category includes persons who are
formally pro-life, that is they believe that the unborn is a human
person who has a right to protection by the state against private
acts of violence. Yet on the so-called “hard cases,” the cases
that demand Christian hope, they shift into the pro-choice camp. Is
it realistic to think that we will win over the majority of Americans
on this point based on reasoned arguments alone? Without hope, will
not the prolife position always seem unrealistic and impractical as
applied to difficult cases? More importantly, are arguments any
substitute for Christian hope in the lives of the women who are faced
with making these choices?

A
second way to consider Grisez’s argument is via introspection. A
few years ago I asked a colleague for advice on a paper I wrote for
the express purpose of explaining the Catholic understanding of
marriage, as far as possible, to a secular audience. The paper,
submitted to (and rejected by) the American Philosophical
Association’s section on Sex & Love, draws on the work of Max
Scheler and is devoid of any explicitly religious references. My
colleague asked me, in effect, if I found the position of my own
paper plausible. That is, if I were a non-believer, would my paper,
or any set of arguments, cause me to change my sexual practices?
Probably not. While arguments provide reasons for choice, choosing
reasonably all-things-considered in “hard cases,” demands
Christian hope.

III. Conclusion

It is not my intention to denigrate reason or reasoned argumentation.
It has its place and is necessary. Also, my primary concern is not
with abstract beliefs or positions but with the moral choices of
moral actors. Reasoned argumentation has an important part to play
in helping persons make morally upright choices, however it is not,
and can never be thought of by Christians, as an adequate substitute
for Christian hope. As Grisez says in concluding the first section
of his paper,

There
is no gospel of life except the integral gospel that Jesus preached.
There is no culture of life other than the culture that is formed by
the redemptive work of God in Christ and built up by those who carry
on his mission. And the culture of life will always be challenged by
the culture of death until Jesus comes again and hands over to the
Father a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of
justice, love, and peace.”17